


Tension and Release

by Dee_Laundry



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M, Manicurist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-31
Updated: 2006-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Laundry/pseuds/Dee_Laundry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Co-written with Rivers_Bend)</p><p>House wonders what Wilson’s up to at the day spa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tension and Release

**Author's Note:**

> An experiment in co-writing. Parts you like are by River; parts you hate are by Dee. Thank you to [](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/profile)[**daisylily**](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/) for the beta.

House said it as a joke first. Just a throwaway line over breakfast, to tease Wilson about the increased frequency with which he was heading to the day spa. He’d long since given up teasing him about the _fact_ of the manicures.

“You’re having an affair with your manicurist, aren’t you? Dipping your stick in her paraffin?”

“Bian is a beautiful girl, but no.” Wilson planted a lingering kiss on House’s lips to show that his interests lay elsewhere.

“Her name is Bian? Is her last name Say?”

“No. And her ass isn’t close to being in the same league as Miss Knowles’. Breasts are gorgeous, though.”

“Careful, Jimmy, you’ll make me jealous.”

“Breasts are overrated. Cocks on the other hand…” Wilson reached for the buttons on House’s jeans.

Blowjobs, House realized later, are a highly effective means of changing the subject.

Then, about a week after that throwaway line, House noticed that Wilson had stopped touching him. He’d kiss House and was as enthusiastic with his mouth as always. He’d let House kiss him, touch him. But he wouldn’t touch back; he kept his hands to himself.

“Not yet,” Wilson would say when House would call him on it. What the hell did that mean?

And every Monday and Thursday, he was off to the damn day spa.

It was getting irritating. House tried not to let it get to him, tried not to let it show, but it began running through his mind in a near constant refrain. Then one Friday, passing through the lobby, he’d caught the receptionist painting her nails and seen Wilson across the room in the same instant, and it came out before he could stop it. “You’re screwing your manicurist!”

Wilson flushed the correct flush and grimaced the correct grimace, putting on the act they’d agreed to maintain at work.

“I don’t have a manicurist! Go back to work!” he replied, stalking the correct indignant stalk to the elevator. House couldn’t tell what the real reaction was underneath, and that only added to his irritation. He snapped at the receptionist, who replied with her own murderous glare, and then took a few minutes to terrorize some nearby med students.

When he got back to his office, he’d cooled down only the tiniest fraction. He snatched up a journal, almost missing the yellow sticky in the middle of his desk.

“Be home at exactly 5:15,” it read. He snorted, crumpled the note, and tossed it toward his trash can.

Focusing on the journal, he saw Dykemann was on about neurotransmitters again. That was always good for a laugh. By the time he’d mentally ripped apart the article and all the research behind it, his mood had improved.

  
He checked his watch as he propped his bike on its stand. 5:13. Close enough.

He was thinking about the last stupid Clinic patient of the day when he walked in the front door, so it took him a minute to recognize the changes that had been made.

It looked almost as if he was in a Bedouin tent. There were sheets draped over the walls and fabric billowing across the ceiling. All the windows were covered, and soft lighting was coming up from the floor, filling the room with a muted but warm glow amongst the shadows.

He dropped his bag and shrugged off his jacket. It was hard to know what to think. Another step into the room and he noticed it. Draped across the back of the couch was a large, white fluffy robe. He ran a hand down the arm of the robe; it was chenille, with a velour cuff. A note on top read, “Clothes off. All of them. Put this on.”

He was not a slave to Wilson’s stickies. If he complied voluntarily, that left him a free man.

The robe was every bit as downy as it looked. The velour detailing grazed his wrists and hands; the hem swung at his knees. The plumate fabric tickled his ass when the robe was loose, so he pulled the belt tighter and was enveloped in the chenille. It was a robe worthy of the most luxurious and elite spa in Europe. House wondered how it had found its way into his living room.

Looking around, he noticed a note on the wall.

“Here,” it read, with an arrow pointing down. Underneath was a small dainty table that held just two things. The first was a filled plain white tea cup. Steam was rising off the top.

“Drink this,” read the note tucked under the edge of the saucer.

House did not drink tea. He drank coffee, which was bold, rugged, and effective. It got the job done without fuss. Tea, especially flavored tea such as he was now holding - from the aroma, it was peppermint and chamomile - was for women and effete Europeans. For people who had time to sit in spas.

He sat on the couch and slowly sipped until the cup was empty.

He then returned to the table, deposited the cup, and picked up the second item from the table: a new bottle of Vicodin. His current bottle, discarded with his jacket, held just a few lonely tablets. This one was completely full.

“Take this,” read the first line of the attached note. House had to smile at the second line: “(just one)”

He dry-swallowed the pill, all the tea being gone. Glancing to his right then, he found another note: “This way” with an arrow pointing down the hall.

On the bathroom door, another sticky: “Come in.”

The bathroom held a warm glow as well, from the rows of candles on the vanity and the toilet tank. The air held hints of vanilla and spices.

Above the tub: “Drop the robe and get in.” It was awkward, and he had to hold the grab bars, but he did it as quickly as he could. The bottom of the tub was covered with a thin air mattress that molded to his body. As he slid down to get comfortable, he appreciated both the velvety cover of the mattress and the warm, soothing water.

He turned and pulled over the headphones that had been left next to the tub. Another sticky: “Put these on.”

“Quite bossy little pieces of paper, aren’t you?” House murmured as he placed the large, soft ear pieces over his ears. One of his favorite pieces for piano was playing; it was gentle and soothing, but with true passion underneath.

After a few moments, he heard a warm familiar voice over the music. “Close your eyes.” He let his eyelids fall and focused on the tactile sensations of the water and the air and the mattress, and the hand that had just begun to slowly caress his hair.

Another hand nudged his shoulder gently and he leaned forward. A pillow was slipped behind his head and upper back, relieving the pressure the cold hard tile had exerted.

Then extraordinarily gentle fingertips were tracing his hairline. From his forehead they smoothed down both sides of his face, around his ears where the headphones rested, and around to the back of his neck. Softly, they traced back to their starting point and then an entire hand, skin smooth, was wiping across his brow. The fingers trailed off his skin slowly. He briefly felt the backs of the fingers caress his cheek and then the fingertips were back.

They began to map his face gently. Eyebrows, eyelashes, nose, cheeks, ears, down his jaw to his chin. They lingered for a moment on his lips, and he kissed them once before they moved on.

With firmer strokes, the fingers sought out the stress in his neck, small circular motions unlocking muscles. When they reached the curve where neck meets back, the hands flattened out, oiled palms slipping almost frictionless across his collarbones and shoulders. He briefly wondered where the oil had come from as the touch had seemed constant, but the hands moved down his chest, and he abandoned thought, surrendering to sensation.

A touch he identified as the broader pad of thumbs teased his nipples. Each fingertip in turn repeated the caress before they kneaded at the muscles underneath. Deft and sure, they knew intimately the pattern of pectoralis, the delineation of deltoid, and they pushed at the tension they found there until it melted away. Then their touch turned lighter, stroking along the skin in long sweeping ovals until an entirely different type of tension began to grow.

Hot, even in contrast to the warm water, the hands moved lower, spreading their heat over skin, through muscles and to his growing erection. Palms cupped his waist as fingers sketched ribs and vertebrae, as thumbs swam lazy circles over his hipbones. He wanted the fingers to follow the curve of his iliac crests inwards and downwards, but they tracked a light course over thighs and knees, shins and ankles until they found his feet.

The thumbs again, he recognized their strength, as the irritations of his day were wrested from their strongholds between his metatarsals. Drifting into the music, the heat and the scent, he began to feel weightless beyond the support that the water provided as the hands made their way back up his legs, alternately soothing the muscles and caressing the skin.

A hand laid flat on his stomach, the edge of a palm brushing gently at the base of his cock, grounded him. Tension that had nothing to do with stress focused under the weight. His limbs stayed relaxed but his hips curled slightly to meet the touch.

The hand that closed around him was soft with care and pampering, skin smooth in a way he hardly recognized. The strokes were at first feather-light and teasing, driving him insane for contact, for pressure. He was almost to the point of opening his eyes or his mouth to stop this madness, when the strokes blessedly changed, became firm and knowing. The hand on his stomach made forays south. Every brush and press of fingertips brought a cry to his throat until he was rigid with release.

He sighed; every cell felt relaxed.

After a few more gentle passes across his torso, the soft hands came to a rest on either side of his neck, thumbs stroking his jaw lazily, and the music died away.

He slowly opened his eyes and saw what he’d been picturing behind his eyelids: Wilson, his regard warm and searching, with the smile that House had learned was for him alone.

“Even Ingrid isn’t that good. Though I will admit, I might be biased by the extras you provide.” House smiled as he pulled Wilson’s right hand to his mouth and kissed the palm, then each of the fingers, enjoying again the smooth, soft skin. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

“Bian does more than manicures. Massage instruction on Mondays, skin treatments for the hands on Thursdays.” Wilson pulled the headphones off House and then stroked his hands down House’s neck and shoulders again.

“Well, Bian is a genius. Now I want your old hands back, though; the feel of these is just a little too girly.”

Wilson’s grip tightened as he leaned in for a kiss.

“Weren’t you paying attention? Just because they’re soft doesn’t mean they’re weak.”


End file.
